Step 12: TAKE IT FURTHER

Step 13: THANKS

. Thank you for taking the time to view my project. I hope it will inspire you with new ideas of your own. As Thomas Edison said, "To inven...

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In the beginning there were pagers. The fact that activated pagers danced their way off of desks and dressers was little more than an aggravation to most people. That changed when it happened in the presence of a maker. Soon after that eureka moment the vibrobot was born. As those early technological vibrating critters started to multiply they began taking on nearly every mechanical form imaginable. Their off balance, weighted motors hummed and shook sending these scooters off in random directions.

Then it happened. One morning a maker preparing to take on a new day glanced down at the toothbrush in his hand, and the bristlebot was conceived. Who could have known the technological stir something as simple as a sawed off toothbrush would make. No one could have predicted the great personal pleasure makers around the world would find in hacking, of all things, a toothbrush. The simple yet elegant design of the bristlebot instantly made it a favorite project for makers of all ages. It quickly became an icon so deeply rooted in maker culture that it could never be replaced or forgotten.

On the next branch of the vibrobot's evolutionary family tree we find the dipbot. Made with discarded integrated circuits, nearly all dipbots are born of, most appropriately, motherboards. These are the low riders of vibrobot culture. What they lack in height they make up for in leg count as most have at least 40. Most dipbots look like some sort of multi-legged bug that may byte.

With such wide ranging variation in its gene pool, the vibrobot family tree has naturally lent itself to continued innovative evolutionary adaptation. Influenced to a great degree by environment, vibrobots continue to spring forth from whatever salvaged stuff seems to be at hand. They can evolve from boxes of spare parts, the guts of electronic dark age gadgets (read the word pagers here), personal care items, old video game controllers, and discarded computers. All of these environmental factors lend themselves quite well to the task of expanding the vibrobot genotype.

That brings us to the focus of this Instructable - the Socbot. Born in the mind of this author when he first saw a dipbot, this is the next step in the evolution of vibratory micro robot design. This new kid on the block is a highly advanced vibrobot. Controlled by a salvaged television infrared remote control, this PICAXE brained next generation vibrobot stands ready to respond to your every directional command. No more random roaming. With the simple press of a button the socbot's unique wire wrap socket locomotion system kicks into gear sending this critter off in whatever direction you choose. Powered by alkaline watch batteries, the socbot features twin outboard vibrating pager motors. Although current limited by design, this microbot is powerful enough to scoot around on any smooth surface. While big on brains, it is still small enough to sit on a quarter. With so much technological heritage and power packed into such a small space, one has to wonder where the next step in the evolution of vibratory technology will take us.

You will need to get a universal remote control and program it to workthe with a Sony television since tbeyou picaxe uses sony codes. Instructions on how to do this will come with whatever remote you decide to use.

im thinking of making one with an attiny45 (since i dont have picaxe's or a programmer for them) just got to figure out a way to make a piece of code that does the same as yours in C++ for an attiny45 :D

Just under the schematic is a little block that has a file icon and Soc Bot Schematic.emf inside it. That is a meta file. If you click on that box a much larger, scalable, and easy to read schematic will appear.

just a thought, but do you think you could put the motors themselves on two separate bristles so you have a more advanced bristle bot? that way you can control each bristle separatly, giving it the direction left or right all the while prepelling it forward.

would it be possible to program it for use with other remotes? for example, i would like to use a very small expresscard remote from my hp laptop instead of a big bulky one... would this be possible? thanks rak

No - that would not be possible. The PICAXE on reads Sony codes and I doubt seriously that your HP remote would use any of those codes. However, you can use another PICAXE as the transmitter. PICAXEs can send and receive SONY codes. You could make it really small too. All you would need is a battery pack, an IR LED, a couple of push buttons and a small case to hold it all. With watch batteries you could make the whole thing a lot less that one inch square.